The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus that is provided with an image capturing function of creating an electronic image from a printed sheet document. The image processing apparatus is, for example, a scanner apparatus or a digital copying machine. The present invention also relates to an image processing method used in the image processing apparatus.
According to the prior art, where a scanner apparatus is used by a specific user or with a particular device, a single document is supplied to the scanner apparatus each time image capture is required. Where the scanner apparatus is used as such, images are registered in a fixed area (a fixed storage area), and the user checks the input images registered in the predetermined registration area of a file system to confirm the input image the user enters.
Large-capacity storage devices and networks are in common use in recent years, and the use of electronic-form documents is general in business. In offices, however, printed sheet documents still play an important role. In accordance with the computerization taking place in the environments of the user, there is an increasing demand for efficiently capturing printed sheet documents so that they can be used as electronic information.
With an increase in the necessity for image capture, it is necessary to process a large number of documents provided by different users. For enhancing the efficiency of image capturing operation, a high-speed and sophisticated scanner apparatus, an example of which is a digital copying machine, is connected to a network and is used in common by different users.
Although the sophisticated scanner provides remarkable advantages to the user, its processing is inevitably complex. For example, images input from the scanner are automatically transferred to external systems and registered there in accordance with the kind of processing designated by the user.
As can be seen from this, the sophisticated scanner apparatus does not necessarily have fixed destinations for registration. For this reason, the user has to access the external systems where the images are registered, so as to confirm whether the images have been input without any problems. This operation has been very troublesome to the user.